The Years Between
by Naladot
Summary: Ten years after the war, Katara visits the Fire Nation Capital. On Katara and Zuko's friendship, and the night he nearly died to save her life.


_A Zuko/Katara friendship fic. Don't be scared away if you don't ship it._

_Obviously, I own nothing._

* * *

Standing at the end of the Water Tribe ship, Katara watched as the sunrise spread across the docks of the Fire Nation capital and up to the city beyond. The influx of Earth Kingdom trade—and immigrants, who could believe it—made for a city bloated with life, spreading up and out of the arms of the crater. Behind her, the Water Tribe tradesmen were grumbling about Fire Nation customs. Fire Nation people, they said, were madmen because of the awful heat. Katara could hardly argue.

But now, in the morning, it was still cool. She remembered lying in her sleeping bag on Fire Nation soil years ago, listening to the steady breathing of her friends, the low rumble of Appa behind them. She'd relished in the cool air and wondered how such a beautiful country could produce such evil people. If she'd known then that she would return to the Fire Nation on the bow of a trade ship instead of in the hull of a tank prepared to wage war, her young self would have sworn never to set foot in the country again. It was all or nothing, then—the war lost or the war won, black or white, a flood or a drought.

She hardly knew her young self now. Too many years, too many changes, lay between, and soon she would be home: _home_, her country struggling to stand again on its own two feet, her country full of warriors who couldn't scrub the war off their hands, full of children who never learned how to hunt and old women who never knew a world without the fear of a Fire Nation attack. She wasn't worried: the nature of water was to adapt, to cover over the scars. She longed for her country, but before she sailed home she felt obliged to stop in the Fire Nation, to finish something she'd left undone.

.

.

The last time she saw Zuko was two years ago in a small apartment in Ba Sing Se. Toph owned a large villa in the center of the city, but claimed she hated it, and preferred to rent out a place for however long she could tolerate Ba Sing Se, just to feel out the city from a different angle. Only the three of them had been in the city then—this was before Sokka taught at the university—Zuko there for the never-ceasing peace talks, Katara there waiting for Aang to return from the Eastern Air Temple. Sitting in Toph's small sitting room, Katara complained about the dust and dirt and heat of the city, sighing, "I just want to go home." Toph teased that Katara had been an old woman for all twenty-two years of her life. Zuko laughed, under his breath, which brought Katara's attention to the timidness of his smile and the dark circle worn around his unscarred eye. At times she looked at him and saw royalty she could hardly comprehend, and at other times, she looked at him and saw a boy.

"You work too hard, Zuko," Katara said. As soon as the words were out of her mouth she realized that she had no idea what Zuko's life was like now. For her and Sokka, it was much the same as it had been, their days spent on Appa's back and month-long stretches at this or that city. Aang had come alive with the end of the war and regarded each challenge as an opportunity for change, his optimism running out of some spiritual well Katara admired. But Zuko—she saw him rarely, and she just didn't know.

He smiled. "I'm well-paid, at least."

"Was that a _joke?_" Toph cried. "A joke that didn't make me cry from being awful?"

Now, on the docks of his country, Katara wondered how the intervening two years would have changed him. She strode through the city, breathing in the humid, smoke-scented air. She stopped for a bag of fire flakes and munched them as she wound through the city streets, past shops decked out in Earth Kingdom green and vast, open-air markets full of food preserved on waterbender-made ice. She knew she was coming to the city center when the number of men and women in uniform grew thicker, until finally she stood under a large gate. Feeling a bit absurd and short-sighted, she walked over to the first guard with a higher-ranked uniform and announced that she was a friend of the Fire Lord.

"I—" the guard said.

"Katara?"

She turned. Standing in the middle of the road, without a crown or gilded uniform, was Zuko. She flung her arms around him and pulled him close.

.

.

Zuko led her around the palace grounds, attempting to make polite conversation about the legacy of each pagoda and pond, but his words came out stilted until they finally tapered off. Katara played with the ends of her hair, wishing she'd been less impulsive about her stop to the Fire Nation capital. She could have kept sailing on, surrounded in every direction by glorious water. Instead she was suffering the heat and an awkward Zuko. She ended up talking about visiting Sokka and Suki in Ba Sing Se, and her own plans for when she returned home. Zuko seemed relieved that he didn't have to talk anymore, and Katara suddenly regretted that in the ten years since the war, she'd been so focused on the heady adventures of travel and reconstruction that she'd assumed nothing would change between her and Zuko. It was clear to her that something had been lost.

"So you're going home?" he asked. He seemed surprised.

"Of course," she said. Unbidden came the picture of him, still a boy, walking down from his ship that looked mammoth to her then. She tried to picture home as it would look now, with her father and Pakku's reconstruction projects and all the money Zuko had tried to provide secretly, hiding it under this treaty and that recompense, but she hadn't been home in six years. "What else would I do?" Even as she said it, she wondered as well. She hadn't been still since the war ended, and home was an unknown.

"I don't know," he shrugged, glancing away from her to the sun-soaked gardens. "I thought Aang . . ."

He didn't finish his thought, but offered her a small smile and led the way to another building. Neither of them said anything, but she was well aware that they were making a wide arc around the Agni Kai arena.

.

.

By his sixteenth birthday Aang had developed such a robust optimism that he insisted all of his plans could be accomplished _now_, and Katara had been too alike to argue. Sokka's warnings always seemed like a naysayer's petty complaints. She remembered one particularly bad argument: Sokka's eyes wide and his voice growing high-pitched as he cried _you can't bust in and change everything around, these are people's lives—you're not playing a game!_ And Aang, grown as tall as Sokka, leaning against the wall and saying with dark self-assurance _you've never believed in the spirits and sometimes I think you don't believe in me, either_. Katara had taken Aang's side, like she always did (according to Sokka). It became the worst fight the three of them had had since she and Sokka broke Aang out of his iceberg. Sokka was practically silent for weeks.

It only took a few years for Katara to see _I told you so_ in Sokka's every expression. The Fire Nation colonies had grown roots, and as Aang struggled to pluck them out he only created more problems. Finally he admitted to Sokka, under the shadow of a Fire Nation temple built on Earth Kingdom soil, that the world wasn't marked by definite lines anymore. Maybe it never had been, but what he remembered—well. He remembered a world before the war and, he now realized, he remembered a world he'd seen as a child. That set him off on his quest to be a better Avatar. Not just one who changed things, but one who changed things for the better. He'd started with a month-long meditation at the Eastern Air Temple, two years ago, while Katara waited in Ba Sing Se. Without its walls the city had begun to spread out, out, new districts and construction and slums flung in every direction. The city grew over on top of itself, people living in the tunnels underground and in buildings lifted high into the air by Fire Nation-imported steel. Katara didn't recognize it at all.

And Zuko had come, so quietly she wouldn't have known he was there but for his uncle sending her a note. She went to his uncle's house in the evening and found the Fire Lord sitting cross-legged on the ground, nursing a cup of tea while Iroh played the tsungi horn.

"You look terrible," she said, smiling. She expected him to stand, expected a warm but royal welcome, but he must have forgotten his status. He looked at her with surprise and tired eyes, then immediately jumped up to prepare her a cup of tea. "And here I thought you'd be too high and mighty to serve anyone tea," she teased, catching Iroh's eye. Iroh busied himself with his instrument while Zuko made an awkward noise in his throat, as if he hoped words would come out if he just opened his mouth.

"Uncle says that the greatest king is the one who will serve tea to his guests," Zuko recited, glancing at her. His eyes were questioning, searching for validation. She smiled. She'd worried about finding a Fire Lord, and instead she found Zuko, twenty-four years old and still just a boy.

.

.

Each day in the Fire Nation capital passed in the heat of the bright summer sun. The palace moved slowly, servants and guards stopping to talk, their laughter drifting across the perfectly groomed gardens. Whether this leisure was Zuko's influence or Iroh's, Katara couldn't be sure. She woke late and ate breakfast on the terrace overlooking a small pagoda. Zuko stopped by most days in the afternoon when the nation took its traditional nap. "I can't sleep," he explained each time, and they walked. Sometimes they were still silent, but Katara found she didn't mind. She remembered the long journey from the outskirts of Ba Sing Se to this city, on the back of Appa. They had spent most of the trip quiet. Neither knew what would happen when the comet had passed. On that journey she'd been able to find comfort in being beside him, completely sure she could trust him. Nothing that happened after compared to the companionship they'd had then—instead, they'd drifted away, caught up in the messy business of living. There was a reason for this, but Katara didn't like to think about it—she didn't like to think about that night in the Agni Kai arena at all.

"Zuko," Katara said one afternoon, as they wandered down a large hall of the palace. "I'm sorry about—about not trying harder to be a good friend to you."

He gave her a strange look. She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry, and looked away from him. "It's okay," Zuko began. But he didn't finish his thought, because they were standing in front of a huge portrait of Ozai, golden flames glittering in his fists.

"I thought you would have had this taken down," Katara said. She saw that the portraits stretched the length of the hall.

"I don't want anyone to forget," Zuko said. He walked a little distance and beckoned her over. "The trouble is we're always forgetting. Do you know how we got our first Fire Lord? He killed all the other warlords. It was a literal test of one man's firepower. But it wasn't always like that." He gestured to the portrait.

Katara looked closely and saw that the Fire Lord in this portrait was a woman. "Fire Lord Lin was very devout. Most of the temples were built during her time. The Avatar then was a waterbender, and rumor had it that they were lovers, and her son was really his—but who knows." He walked over to the next portrait. "Her son loved dancing, and he commissioned every great work of art in our country, as well as throwing dance parties that were so good the stodgy historians bothered to write about them."

He smiled. Then his gaze shifted to where they'd been standing before, under the flat eyes of Ozai's portrait. "By the time I was born, we'd forgotten all that."

Katara watched Zuko. A muscle clenched in his jaw, and he inhaled deeply.

He looked at her. "What do you think they will remember about me?"

She looked at his scarred eye, and then her eyes dropped to his chest, where another scar was hidden. "They'll remember your integrity. They'll remember the good you did for your country."

Zuko stared at her for a long moment, then his eyes shifted back to the portrait of Ozai. "History isn't always that kind," he said.

.

.

Briefly, when Aang was still on his crusade to mold the world into his ideal and Sokka was holding his tongue, they'd been afraid of another war—a Fire Nation civil war. Zuko had written a vague but urgent note, cloaked in royal refinery. Sokka read it, cleared his throat, and translated in a high-pitched imitation of Zuko: "Send help. They're trying to kill me!"

So Katara had gone.

There had been no time for relaxation; she'd hardly seen the palace. She arrived on a repurposed Fire Nation war ship in the dead of night, then was whisked into a hidden chamber deep in the palace where she and Zuko and Iroh plotted in hushed voices under the light of flickering lanterns.

"A lot of people have lost a lot of money and power," Iroh said gravely. "It takes a more strength than most have, to see past one's own glory."

Zuko kept his head bent, his mouth pressed into a firm line, and said nothing. Katara couldn't tell whether he was surprised, upset, frightened—he kept it all deep inside, which scared her. She was sure he was building up pressure inside, pressure that would explode when the right moment came. When the sun was likely coming up, Iroh excused himself for a nap. Katara and Zuko stayed behind to plan.

"You need to talk to me," Katara said, more bite in her words than she'd intended. Zuko's eyes flicked up to hers and she saw no anger—merely sadness and exhaustion. He sipped tea from a porcelain cup, appearing to ignore her as he put his finger to a letter they'd received from a spy. Just when she was about to raise her voice, he spoke.

"I went to see my sister," he said. His eyes met hers again, briefly, before he looked away. "She—she was ecstatic."

"About what?"

Zuko sighed. He pinched the bridge of his nose, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, then removed the first layer of royal clothing, and the tunic beneath. She first saw the scar raised in the center of his chest, as blood red as it had been when she healed it. Then she saw another mark—an angry gash running from his collarbone to his shoulder, before taking a right angle and cutting into his chest. He stood for a moment, then replaced his tunic. "I almost didn't tell you."

"You idiot," Katara breathed. She felt like the wind had been knocked out of her, already deeply certain of what had happened. "You are nearly killed—nearly _assassinated—_and you consider not telling me?"

"I didn't even want you to come! My uncle did! He's very good at forgery, you know, and—"

Zuko reached to take another sip of his tea and discovered that the cup had frozen solid. Katara glared at him from across the table, her fists clenched, as she tried to steady the swell of her emotions. "Well," she said, her voice brimming with anger, "it's a good thing he is." She bit her tongue to keep from spitting out the rest of her words—that Zuko was one of the most profoundly stupid people she knew, and given to self-martyrdom at that!

They worked in silence for the rest of the morning, going over documents and jotting down notes on the map in the center of the table. This wasn't the way Katara usually worked, it was the way Sokka worked, but Zuko seemed to find comfort in it. They'd likely forget everything but the approach when they were on the field. Zuko was a fool for insisting on going on this mission himself, but for that, she really couldn't blame him. But for hiding things, trying to do _everything_ himself—she blamed him for that.

She broke the silence with a question. "What about your sister?"

Zuko glanced up. He was sprawled across a couch, hardly the picture of royalty, with his head resting on his hand. "What do you mean?"

"You said you went to see her, and she was ecstatic." She walked around the table and sat herself on an overly ornate chair, as if to absorb some of the authority it carried. "What else?"

Zuko blinked. "She said—" He sighed and set the papers down. His eyes drifted to a spot somewhere above Katara's head, and weariness settled into his expression. "She said I was getting what I deserved. For what I did to my family." He opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, then took up the papers again and the silence resumed.

It was only much, much later—in Ba Sing Se, when Zuko mentioned Azula's death—that Katara realized the guilt he carried, the self-hatred that came from watching his family fragment until he himself delivered the final blow.

.

.

A soft, cool breeze blew across the island on the morning Zuko hiked up the mountain to pay his respects to his ancestors. Katara went with him, carrying half his load. She learned, from a servant, that Zuko always insisted on doing these rites himself despite the fact that no Fire Lord had done them himself in centuries. Usually Iroh would join him, but Iroh was enjoying his role at the top of his tea empire from Ba Sing Se.

The graves were cut from white stone and were smaller than Katara expected. The largest was a monument to all the Fire Lords of the past—"to save time," Zuko explained with a wry smile. Zuko paid his respects here first, bowing his head to the ground in front of it, lighting incense and repeating the process. Then he moved to the next group of gravestones. "My grandparents," he said quietly. Katara read the characters engraved in each: _Azulon,_ _Ilah, Roku, Ta Min_. The breeze blew and raised goosebumps on her arms. She hadn't realized Zuko was a descendant of Roku's.

Then the next graves. He said nothing about these. _Ursa_ and _Azula_, Katara read. He stayed longest at his mother's grave, but when he stood back from Azula's, he looked away from her quickly, blinking back what she knew were sudden tears. He turned toward the downward slope of the mountain, outlined in the sun. She reached out and held onto his hand, and they stood there for a long time, looking at the ocean glittering before them.

.

.

"To Zuko," Sokka said, thrusting his wine glass into the air. "And a year without any more attempts on your life."

Everyone laughed and clinked glasses while Katara hung back, darkly aware of how unlikely that was. The brewing Fire Nation civil war had been stifled, not stamped out. She met Zuko's eyes across the table and held his gaze for a moment before closing her eyes and taking a long drink from her glass.

They were in Omashu for Spring Festival, enjoying King Bumi's spacious palace, the bright warm southern sun, and far too much rich food. Sokka and Suki had announced their engagement as soon as Katara and Zuko arrived in the metal airship repurposed for trade and travel. Everyone was thrilled, and used it as an excuse to drink more, to laugh louder. Katara used it as an excuse to forget about the long weeks she and Zuko had just spent trying to find the weak points in the rebels' armor.

The new year usually felt full of potential, but that year she merely felt cold, like everything was going to change before she was ready. Maybe it was because Zuko had had another close brush with death, but she couldn't shake a nervous feeling. Sokka engaged, Aang throwing himself into changing the world as he saw fit, and Zuko putting himself in danger every time she turned her back—she had no control over where things were headed. And she hadn't been home in a very, very long time.

Zuko, face flushed, raised his glass next. He stretched his arm toward her and his gaze was steady. "To Katara. For saving my life, again."

The room was too quiet as everyone clinked their glasses together. Katara's glass felt slick in her hand, shaking slightly as she raised it to her lips, holding Zuko's gaze until finally her eyes snapped away. She'd never talked to anyone about that night. They'd known Zuko was injured, but the story—oh, they'd all been caught up in the chaos of rebuilding the world, and there had never been the time. And what would she have said? _When it came down to it, Zuko threw himself in front of me to save my life, and nearly died._

She exited the room as the noise grew again and stepped out onto the balcony. It was a wide, long balcony, stretching across the full front of the palace and overlooking the downward slope of Omashu's streets. Lanterns hung on every building, giving the city a warm glow. She sucked in air between her teeth and exhaled slowly.

"I'm sorry," Zuko said behind her. She shrugged. "I never told anyone, either."

She turned. He was lit by the warmth of the room behind him. Sokka's laughter rose above everyone else's and it all spilled out into the night, sounding over the rhythm of her heart beating in her ears. She lifted her glass. "For saving my life." And she threw back her head and drank the last few drops, then brushed past him back into the party, and avoided him for the rest of the night, and then for the next few years, until Aang decided to make himself a better avatar and Katara could not avoid him anymore.

.

.

In Ba Sing Se, two years ago, she'd wonder why she'd been so foolish, so afraid. He came to her apartment, the small one she'd found in a quiet corner of the city, with a gift of his uncle's finest tea held awkwardly in his hands. It was an apology, she knew, though she didn't know what for. Or she didn't want to know, so she decided it was for the long silences that always grew between them. She took the tea and, with a smile, invited him to climb up onto her roof, where the sunset spread out above them in purple and blue streaks.

They talked for a long time, until the sky was dark, about nothing important. They laughed about Sokka's wedding. Predicted Toph's rise to fame and fortune and made plans to spend the next day with her. Worried about Aang's future.

And then, quietly, Zuko said, "Azula is dead."

Katara looked at him. She couldn't read his emotion—sadness, guilt, all of it mixed up together so that she doubted he knew what he was feeling, either. She realized that he must have felt guilty all of these years for what happened to Azula, something she couldn't have comprehended when she was younger. Then, Azula was simply evil. Now, Azula was his sister, someone he'd hated and loved in equal measure. Her heart ached to look at him.

"How did she die?" she asked softly.

For a moment she thought he would cry. She watched the curve of his back as he took several deep breaths before saying, "She killed herself." Another breath. "She wasn't crazy. Not at the end. She said—she said that she'd rather die than keep living in shame. I should have known then, what she'd do." He pinched his nose, then shook his head, as if to berate himself.

"You couldn't have known." Katara placed a hand flat against Zuko's back. She kept it there for a moment, her thumb pressed into the curve of his shoulder, before drawing back.

"Do you think about that night?" Zuko asked abruptly.

Katara swallowed down the lump that rose suddenly in her throat. Somewhere far away Zuko was saying, "I want you to know that I would do it again. I wouldn't change my mind."

She heard him speak but she was fully in that night, breathing in the smoke. Watching a finger of lighting stretch toward her, coming so close she could smell the crackle of electricity on the air. The certainty she was about to die.

"That was a long time ago, Zuko," she heard herself say.

But in her head, her hands were over Zuko's heart, feeling his soul leaving his body, tears welling in her eyes as she tried to pull him back, pull him back into life—

"I don't think we should talk about it," she said, and excused herself. She took the stairs back down into her apartment and went into the kitchen where she leaned herself against the counter and tried to breathe. Zuko did not need to know that sometimes the scent of smoke would send her back into that night, or that sometimes she'd hear Azula's scream in her dreams and wake believing Zuko to be dead. He didn't need to know because she couldn't think about it, couldn't dwell on it, because she didn't know what it meant that she was alive and Zuko was the one who had saved her. She didn't know how she was supposed to feel about the person who was willing to die for her.

"I'm sorry," he said, standing in the doorway of her kitchen. And then he left.

She didn't see him again while she was in Ba Sing Se. The next time she saw him, she was on a Northern Water Tribe ship that she'd asked to stop in the Fire Nation capital, against her better judgment, because it was finally time to face the past.

.

.

"Honestly, I'm afraid of going home," Katara said. They walked slowly down a long covered path, a hot wind lifting her hair off her neck. She brushed back the strands of hair that flew into her eyes and continued. "I haven't been home in so long. I haven't been _still_ in so long. Every year it's been a new cause of Aang's, or you trying to get yourself killed, or a project of Sokka's, or _Toph_ making messes that I have to clean up—you know. It's just . . . What if I get home, and I can't adjust?"

He smiled slightly, looking down at her with an affection that made her blush and look away. "Katara, out of everyone, you're the one I worry about least."

"People expect a lot of me, you know." She pushed hair out of her eyes again as they walked through another palace courtyard. She was leading them, subtly, a bit nervous that he might already be aware of where she was taking them. "They expect me to take my dad's place."

"You'd make a great leader, Katara," Zuko said. He didn't elaborate, and she realized that it was simply because he had faith in her to do greater things than she thought she was capable of. She smiled to herself, and they walked quietly.

Zuko's steps slowed when he realized where they were headed. He stopped a few paces behind her, and she turned to face him, looking up into the worry that suddenly lined his face. "We don't need to go there, Katara."

She stretched out her hand. "It's time we talked about it. _I_ need to talk about it."

He hesitated. Then he took her hand. They walked through another courtyard, down large stairs, and out into the expanse of the Agni Kai arena.

"I'm going to make it into a garden," Zuko said softly, his hand firmly clasping hers. "This is one thing I _want_ to forget."

Katara took several deep breaths. She could picture it vividly: the dark red hue of the sky. The flames towering above her in brilliant orange and blue. The terrible burning scent Katara inhaled as she pressed water into Zuko's chest, willing him to live, begging any spirit who would listen to let him live—

She realized Zuko was staring at her, eyes wide with worry, and that she was crushing his hand with her grip. She pulled her hand away and wrapped her arms around herself, a nervous gesture she'd abandoned after adolescence.

"I've never talked to anyone about that night," she said in a low voice. She closed her eyes. The sun was too bright today, too hot. "I've never known how to put it into words."

Lighting was hurtling toward her. She was going to die. And then Zuko was between her and the lightning. And then he was lying on the ground, dying.

Maybe she always let the years intervene between her and Zuko because it was too painful to be reminded of that night, too difficult to understand what sacred thing connected them now. Her memory of that night would always arrest her with its urgency, its terrible possibilities. Katara would always be filled with awe that they were both alive. That she owed her life to Zuko, a boy she had hated.

He put his hands on her shoulders as another hot wind blew, stirring up the dust of the ground. "I would do it again." His brow furrowed and his hands tightened on her shoulders as he searched for the right words. "You're my greatest friend."

Katara blinked back tears and wrapped her arms around him. She laid her head against his chest and heard his heart beating steady, strong. They'd shared so much—every fight, when they were enemies and then allies. Every battle, in the war and after. The parts of herself she'd let Zuko see when she couldn't let anyone else, like her anguish and anger over her mother. "Thank you," she whispered, knowing he was right.

He was, truly, her greatest friend.

.

.

Her heart felt light as she stood at the end of the dock the next bright, clear morning. The ocean glittered before them. She turned to look at Zuko, suddenly aware of his royalty. Not because of his crown or the palace she'd stayed in or the gifts currently being loaded onto her ship. It was his presence, his humility, his self-assurance that came from somewhere deep within. Seeing him this way made her happy.

But more than that—she was happy that she could look at him without her memories suddenly rising to the surface and threatening to overtake her. She marveled that they were both alive. The very fact of their life, and their friendship, made her heart over-full.

"Let's not wait so long before we see each other again," Katara said, pulling Zuko into a last hug. He smiled—a genuine smile.

"I promise," he said.

She stepped onto the ship and waved from its prow as they began to sail away, waved until Zuko was a tiny figure at the edge of the dock. The sun was brilliant, lighting the water so radiantly that it hurt her eyes to look. She was headed home, full of some happiness she could neither describe nor understand. _Home_. Hope swelled inside her as she stared out into the sea, knowing that the wide expanse of water held a promise for the years ahead.

.

.

_end._


End file.
